21 Jun
2011
21 Jun
'11
11:36 p.m.
On 2011 Jun 21, at 1:11 PM, Fred Cisin wrote:
As a kid ca. 1974, I received one slide rule for a high school honours
award, and another (a sophisticated, 21 scales, 'professional' Faber
Castell) as a gift. Not to say I didn't learn something from them, but
they were both just in time to be useless in practice as scientific
calculators took over.
While I much prefer RPN for execution on a key-press calculator, I'd
rather read and write infix for textual presentation and programming.
I'm not really that fond of Forth as one has to mentally track the
stack state as you read the code, but it may be a lack of familiarity
as I haven't used really use it extensively.
Does anyone actually prefer RPN for textual presentation?
> It's
been so long sine I have HAD to use one, I cannot, for the life
> of me
> remember how to use my slide rule :(
On Tue, 21 Jun 2011, Tony Duell wrote:
Eh? If you undersnad what a slide rule really
does (it add lengths
essentially) and know what a logarithm is, you don;t need to remember
hgow to sue one.
In addition to using scales C & D to add logarithms (multiply!),
scales A & D (or B & C) give you squares and square roots.
A decent slide rule usually had half a dozen other useful scales.